Central Minnesota Beer by Jacob Laxen

Author:Jacob Laxen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2020-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

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THE REEMERGENCE OF ST. CLOUD BEER

More than one hundred years after the Old Heidelberger beer got its name from a public naming contest in St. Cloud, Beaver Island Brewing unknowingly branded its eventual signature beer in the same fashion. Sticky notes were scattered throughout the Beaver Island taproom in May 2015, and patrons were asked to submit names for the brewery’s upcoming chocolate oatmeal stout release. Samples of the beer were made available to patrons for inspiration. Beaver Island Brewing’s head brewer, Chris Laumb, modeled the brew after a popular stout called Buffalo Sweat made by Tallgrass Brewing of Manhattan, Kansas. Laumb had contract brewed that beer during his tenure at Third Street Brewhouse. Laumb put his own twist on this style, using British malts and organic Ecuadorian cocoa nibs.

The winning entry of the naming contest was actually submitted as “Mississippi Sweet,” but Beaver Island Brewing swapped the order of the words; thus, the Sweet Mississippi stout was named. “[Most] importantly, nobody had used it yet,” Beaver Island co-founder Nick Barth told the St. Cloud Times when the winning entry was announced. Sweet Mississippi was formally released in July 2015 as a seasonal brew. The variety returned the next spring to much fanfare, but again, it was just a seasonal brew. Eventually, the demand for Sweet Mississippi forced it to become a year-round flagship beer. It’s now the most heavily produced Beaver Island Brewing beer, and it claimed a bronze medal at the 2018 U.S. Open Beer Championship. “I knew it would be successful but had no idea it would be as successful as it is,” Laumb said. “As a stout, it remains strong in the summer months, which is crazy to me.…It’s also a great base beer to [do] wacky stuff, like adding coconut and coffee. You can really play around with it.”

Laumb has also claimed prestigious awards for other Beaver Island Brewing beers. The brewery’s first major medal came when its Oktoberfest brew won bronze at the 2017 Great American Beer Festival. The annual Denver beer festival and competition was co-founded by homebrew icon Charlie Papazian in 1982, and it is currently considered the “Super Bowl” of the commercial brewing industry. At the competition, judges typically award a gold, silver and bronze medal in about one hundred unique categories. Several thousand breweries from across the country enter the competition each year. No one from Beaver Island Brewing was present to accept the brewery’s medal and receive an honorary fist bump and photo from Papazian in 2017, but the founders quickly learned of their victory. Laumb remembered that he was sitting on his couch when the awards were announced; he had found an online livestream of the awards ceremony and had turned it on just in the nick of time—the Oktoberfest category was announced just minutes after he started watching. “It was super cool and something I never thought would happen,” Laumb said. “Being recognized like that gives you some [credibility] and certainly helps push some product.” Meanwhile, Barth

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